A Very Different Character Almost Went To Canto Bight In Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Canto Bight played a large part in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, and one of the main purposes the casino planet served was to show us a building relationship between Rose and Finn. (Well, that and to bring in more ideas about The Force at the very end.) Regardless, when Rian Johnson was putting together his ideas for the movie, Rose wasn't originally the character picked to go with Finn on that mission. In fact, in a recent Q&A, Johnson revealed that it was originally going to be Poe Dameron, but that quickly changed when Johnson realized that Poe's scenes were pretty boring. He said about the Poe Dameron scenes:

[He was] hardest to write for, honestly, just in terms of figuring out what their story was going to be was Poe. Luke was obviously the hardest overall, but besides Luke, Poe was the trickiest. Poe is such a clear-cut, simple character in [Episode VII] because he's Oscar Isaac and he's the most charismatic man in the universe and he's just rad. Honestly, I actually wrote, in the very first draft I wrote of it, Poe went with Finn on the mission to Canto Bight, and the two of them were going to be together on the mission. And it didn't work at all because those two get along so well and it'd be really boring.

In The Last Jedi, Finn leaves with new character Rose to Canto Bight to find someone who can help with a crucial infiltration mission to save the Resistance. Meanwhile, Poe stays behind to deal with Vice Admiral Holdo and stall until the duo's return. Some people felt that Poe's time would have been better spent with Finn bro-ing it up on Canto Bight. Apparently, writer-director Rian Johnson felt that way too and said during a Q & A with Collider that in the very first draft of the script, Poe was the one going to the casino-oriented planet. However, because Finn and Poe get along so well, the scenes didn't work. You need friction to make fire, and with no conflict between the two, it makes sense that those scenes felt as if they were going nowhere.

Although the scenes didn't work for every viewer, in that regard, Rose going on the mission works, because she and Finn don't get along and have different views on the war, which creates the backbone for one of the key themes of the movie.

Rian Johnson also says that Poe was one of the trickiest characters to write because he wasn't a very deep character in The Force Awakens. He was just a really cool and charismatic pilot, which was fine for that movie, but not very useful for The Last Jedi. That's what led Johnson to dig deeper and create Poe's arc of going from a hero to a leader.